Sunday, 28 September 2014

September, balmy as June,
And the air has a warmth and a thickness,
And the rosehips glow
In the afternoon,
Prepubescent in their spotlessness,
But ladybird-like in their redness,
Though altogether too slow,
To be ladybird-like in their quickness.
But a ladybird squashed by a bike
Must cease to be ladybird-like;
But does becoming lifeless
Make it rosehip-like in its deadness?
September, balmy as June
And the fruit of the blackthorn is sloe,
Upsidedown
In the heat of the afternoon,
Adolescent in its sleepiness
As a sloth and just as slow.
And the blackness comes and goes,
Now it glows
Like the nose of that creature,
With beetle-like, granite-like shininess,
Then it seems to absorb,
All the light of the orb,
And a new distinguishing feature:
A bloom of dullness and dreariness grows.
And September balmy as June,
Turns me barmy as loonies out under the moon,
As a dreamy, afternoon weariness shows
In my face, as my mind
Leaves all reason behind,
And begins to see fruit hanging up by its toes.

Jangling tunefully under my bed,
The sound rising up
Through the old deal floor,
Filling, persistently, my head,
With harmony:
the reason of a season long before words.
Speaking not to the soul
As the Erard and Broadwood,
Not affecting, a lunar like pull
On the whole tide of emotion,
But appealing to order,
And understood by some
Instinct known to Pythagoras.

Rameau, Scarlatti, Daquin,
Handel, Bach and Couperin
Providing energy, brilliance,
Commotion, and a joyful demonstration
Of the power of rationality,
Precision, joy and vitality
Consisting of and insisting on intelligence.

"In describing the vacillation and incompetence of the government during the reign of Ethelred Unraed, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that when the enemy was in the east then our levies were mustered in the west, and when they were in the south then our levies were in the north, and that whatever course of action was decided upon it was not followed even for a single month."
From a comment on the Telegraph blogs by one "The Real PM".The enemy was violent in the east,And so we wagered war towards the north.And next we closed our minds and almost ceasedTo notice inhumanity; poured forthA worthless propaganda to drum upSupport for causing further bloodshed whenCeasefire had just then been agreed.My cupOf absolute contempt runs over. MenWill vacillate, and dither else cause harmBy pointless interference; then ignoreThe consequences of their actions, armGuerillas, condemn self defence... Yet warAgainst the enemy within's forbidden,"Lets kick over the traces, keep things hidden!"